On June 6 2015, reality TV star and renowned businessman, Donald Trump, announced that he was running for president in the 2016 elections. At the time, many politicians did not consider Trump as a threat, believing he was just another “all-talk, but no-walk” celebrity way out of their depth. And yet, a year later, Donald Trump won the 2016 elections in perhaps the biggest political blunder in recent history. How could a man with no previous political experience be given the arguably most powerful position of the free world? What steps did he take and how can we amend it to guarantee the quality of the electoral process?
The Words of a Demagogue
A quick google definition of a demagogue is “a political leader who seeks support by appealing to the desires and prejudices of ordinary people rather than by using rational argument.” They’re speakers that focus on the pathos argumentative style and disregard the ethos and logos aspects of debate. Famous demagogues of the past are: Julius Caesar, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. These are leaders that preyed on the fears of its people. They love to play to popular prejudices and misinformation, what we in the modern day call “fake news”, and love to portray themselves as the needed change for their country. Donald Trump is a demagogue. His take on Middle East foreign policy and immigration focused on painting these foreigners and immigrants as malicious, apparently striking a chord with both far-right extremists and even some common Republican folk. His fear-mongering had garnered so much support that by November of 2015, he was already leading in the Republican polls. (Levitsky & Ziblatt, 2018)
Trump took this demagoguery to the next level. He not only created a negative narrative of these “non-Americans”, but also of his competitors. His “dirty” assault campaign on other candidates (such as comparing Ben Carson to a child molester.) coupled with his talents as a speaker shut down other Republican candidates in the eyes of the people. (Krieg, 2015) First Marco Rubio, followed by John Kasich, and finally on April 27 of 2016, Ted Cruz dropped out of the presidential race, leaving no other major Republican figure except for Donald Trump. (GOLDMACHER et al., 2016) These politicians could not regain enough credibility nor support to combat that of Trump’s, allowing Trump to win the G.O.P. nomination and becoming the Republican representative for the presidential election.
Trump had managed to tap into the hatred and fears that many Republicans had (of topics like President Obama’s term, issues with the Middle East, etc.) and turned it into a means to grow his cult-like following. He was winning the hearts of the people. If only Republicans voters weren’t so disillusioned in their usual Republican leaders, Trump would have remained a fringe candidate.
The Failures of America’s Gatekeepers
Normally, mainstream parties, like the Democratic and Republican party, have a responsibility to “gatekeep.” This means to isolate and defeat radical parties in a method behaviour Political Scientist Nancy Bermeo termed “distancing.” (Glenn, 2020) By never aligning themselves or giving a platform to political extremists, they prevent these individuals from ever being legitimized. This is hard for many parties as the temptation of nominating these usually well-loved extremists would result in much higher popularity and therefore votes during the election season. While America’s gatekeepers were doing an okay job at denouncing the legitimacy of Donald Trump, this 2016 election revealed that perhaps the biggest member of the gatekeeping club is actually the media.
Many prominent right-winged media individuals such as Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and Sean Hannity, publicly endorsed Trump. (Cassidy et al., 2016) This gave Trump a more legitimate campaign in the eyes of right-winged media followers. Not only the right-wing, but even left-leaning media outlets such as CNN, failed to gatekeep Donald Trump. CNN provided much screen time for Trump over the course of his campaign. Why? For a simple reason: Ratings. Thanks to an unusually high interest in the presidential race, primetime viewership went up by an astounding 128% for CNN (in comparison to the previous year) in the weeks leading up to the election. (Edkins, 2016) This was a huge deal as the prevalence of youtube and online streaming websites have slowly been pushing cable TV out of relevancy, especially among younger generations. Thanks to news stations like CNN, Trump wasn’t just given a platform, he was served it on a silver platter free-of-charge. He was given the space to express his extremist ideology to an even larger audience and even though many found his speeches to be utter nonsense, just as many people found his speeches uniquely refreshing.
Even extremist alt-right alternative media such as Alex Jones’ Infowars, Breibart, etc. had struck gold in their support of Donald Trump. Online analytics company, Tubular Insights, identified that during the campaign Alex Jones’ Infowars was generating the most engagement (likes, shares etc) across all online news platforms. Likewise, Breibart’s online ranking puts it above the LA Times, the New York Post, Vox, Slate and the New Yorker, not to mention CBS, NBC and ABC's news sites throughout Donald Trump’s campaign. (Sillito, 2016)
Trump was an incredibly polarizing candidate with many voters either despising him or adoring him, but that passion got people to talk about him 24/7. His ludacris tweets and blatantly racist statements were the buzz of the election. It was totally new for an American politician to be so undiplomatic, and that’s because Donald Trump was never a politician until 2016, he was a reality TV star. He reveled in the drama and had masterfully taken over every single airwave. He won the exposure war. Trump's success is often regarded as a “failure of journalism” because the media oversaturated their airtime with Trump but weren’t able to communicate the facts effectively to make him appear as an inadequate candidate for presidency.
Amendment
So with all these in mind, how can we improve ourselves for the future?
“Don’t Accept Easy Answers”
Philip Freeman, Professor of Western Culture at Pepperdine (Square, 2016)
Demagogues will always be present in democracy. They are a natural product of a society that depends on elections. There will always be politicians that aim to rise to seats of power by riding on the back of its citizens greatest fears. Demagogues are first and foremost, talented speakers. But most of the time, that’s really all that they are. So the greatest challenge for us as citizens, is to be able to identify when a leader is being insincere. This is a mighty task for us citizens, and should only really be our responsibility on the rarest of occasions. But know this, a leader that builds his campaign on the foundation of fear, of typecasting, of “change” at the cost of one’s own principles, should never be a leader, demagogue or not.
"It is written that united we stand and divided we fall."
John Dickinson, Founding Father (Miller, 2013)
To keep the system intact, politicians need to play the rules of the democratic game. They cannot choose to align themselves with radicals, even at the cost of losing to their political “enemies”. Due to the popularity of demagogues, political parties must band together to face these threats even if it means teaming up with their sworn ideological rivals.
Throughout history, there have been many successful examples of proper gatekeeping. In the 1930s, “The German Centre Party” had faced a difficult decision, form an alliance with longtime competitors, the Socialists and Liberals, or form an alliance with the “Rexists”, a right-leaning group which shared some ideological similarities with the “German Centre Party” but rejected the values of democracy. They eventually banded with both the Socialists and Liberals and pushed for the nomination of van Zeeland. This was perhaps the most important gatekeeping act performed by Germany. Even though the Socialists distrusted van Zeeland, they nevertheless put their value for the democratic system ahead of their own personal interests. This coalition of ideological rivals against extremists has been the most effective method of gatekeeping. It happened again in Finland when the ideological rivals “National Progressive Party” and the “Social Democratic Party of Finland” teamed up to combat a radical Finnish nationalist group called the “Lapua Movement”. These actions are the historical equivalent of Captain America teaming up with HYDRA, it’s a big deal when it happens and only reaffirms just how big a threat extremists are to the democratic identity.
“Social Media is not just a spoke on the wheel of POLITICS. It’s becoming the way entire bicycles are built.”
Inspired by Ryan Lilly, Speaker and Author (Deshpande, 2020)
Social media and alternative media have changed the democratic game, for better and for worse. The diversity of this “new media” has allowed for more voices to be heard and for people of similar interests, but different backgrounds, to connect with each other. In the elections, it provided access to unprecedented levels of information and allowed for usually politically inactive individuals to become aware of key events of the election season. However, its very strength is also its downfall. It provided unadulterated access to a vast amount of political content, but the oversaturation of information is often trivial, unreliable, and even polarizing at times.
The role of new media in politics is still pretty new and much is still to be discerned as to its place in politics. My personal take is that you shouldn’t go to social media as your main source of political information. The facts are buried under a landslide of personal opinions and barbaric arguments. Major media outlets are still the best and most trustworthy places to learn about politics. Perhaps now more than ever, there is a greater need for these social media platforms to have stricter terms of service as to what can and cannot be shared on social media. There is often too much misinformation on the platform that should be prevented to ensure we are not miseducating the masses. Demagogues thrive in misinformation and fears after all.
Conclusion
The 2016 election served as a wake-up call for many to take more initiative and pay more attention to what’s happening in their political hemisphere. Democracy is, and will always be, a society dependent on its people after all. And even though the 2016 election will remain a dark stain on the history of politics, we can take what we learned from that moment, and use it as a guidebook, as to how to traverse future repeats of this season of politics. Though we lack the omniscient ability to change the past, we do have the ultimate power to change the future.
Sources:
Cassidy, J., Osnos, E., & Rothfeder, J. (2016, May 4). How Donald Trump won the G.O.P. nomination. The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/how-donald-trump-won-the-g-o-p-nomination.
Deshpande, I. (2020, June 16). Toolbox.com. https://www.toolbox.com/marketing/social-media/articles/what-is-social-media-marketing/.
Edkins, B. (2016, December 1). Donald Trump's election delivers massive ratings for Cable News. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/brettedkins/2016/12/01/donald-trumps-election-delivers-massive-ratings-for-cable-news/?sh=2b2c9698119e.
Glenn, D. (2020, July 23). Lessons from lost democracies. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/lessons-from-lost-democracies/.
GOLDMACHER, K. A. T. I. E. G. L. U. E. C. K. and S. H. A. N. E., Nussbaum, M., Cheney, K., & Zeitz, J. (2016, May 4). Ted Cruz drops out of presidential race. POLITICO. https://www.politico.com/story/2016/05/ted-cruz-drops-out-of-presidential-race-222763.
González Francisco, & Owen, D. (2017). The New Media’s Role in Politics. In The age of perplexity: Rethinking the world we knew. essay, Penguin Random House.
Krieg, G. (2015, November 13). Trump likens Carson's 'pathology' to that of a child molester - cnnpolitics. CNN. https://edition.cnn.com/2015/11/12/politics/donald-trump-ben-carson-child-molester/index.html.
Levitsky, S., & Ziblatt, D. (2018). How democracies die. Crown.
Miller, C. (2013, June 28). The liberty song. What So Proudly We Hail. https://www.whatsoproudlywehail.org/curriculum/the-american-calendar/the-liberty-song.
Sillito, D. (2016, November 14). Donald Trump: How the media created the president. BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-37952249.
Square, Z. P. (2016, June 20). What history teaches us about demagogues like the Donald. Time. https://time.com/4375262/history-demagogues-donald-trump/.
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